


Only Fifth

by Highsmith (quimtessence)



Category: Solar System (Anthropomorphic)
Genre: Anthropomorphism - Freeform, Banter, Bullying, Friendship, Gen, Humour, Meta, Sighing, Snark, Tea, Yuletide 2015, pseudo-crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 18:03:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5465810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quimtessence/pseuds/Highsmith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's like he thinks he owns the place! That Jupiter...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only Fifth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sealgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sealgirl/gifts).



> Dear **Sealgirl** , I was super-excited to receive this assignment, and I had a lot of fun writing it. I'm rather unsure whether it's science-y enough for you. Moreover, it's a bit meta, a bit crack-y, and just generally pretty darn weird. Essentially, the story takes after me. Nevertheless, I dearly hope you enjoy it. (And that you like tea and enjoy reading about it.) My infinite gratitude goes to my two beta readers, who shall, for the time being, remain nameless. I kept messing around with it afterwards, therefore all remaining mistakes are my own.

There is an order. There has been an order since the beginning of Time, and there will always be one until they run out of Space. Or something. 

To be perfectly honest, the entire thing is kind of... _silly_. 

Massive balls of gas and dust and unpronounceable chemical elements hurtling through Space, following stars around like mindlessly-cheery little puppies? Absolutely preposterous. I mean, who even comes up with this stuff? 

*

All right, all right. If you _must_ know, there is more to it than the whole Solar System... _arrangement_. (Not "arrangement" in the sense of a sexual arrangement, although that would have been a good deal more gripping for all you deliciously perverted sods out there.) 

If one were to speculate, one could do so by imagining an office. If one were to speculate in the completely wrong direction that might land one with a copyright lawsuit or six, one could imagine an Office with a scripted mockumentary feel to it—but no one wants a gaggle of solicitors on one's doorstep, now does one? 

Instead, let's say this particular office consisted of people like you or me (if you or I were people, that is), going about their daily lives, yet retaining certain characteristics that might suggest deeper waters. 

Don't let the setting fool you. If you must, let the characters' names guide you. Yes, there are characters. What—are you new or something? Of course there are characters. This _is_ a story, after all. Keep up! 

(And expect tea. Loads and _loads_ of tea.) 

Let's imagine that now, shall we? 

*

Saturn sighed, expelling the breath of the long-suffering witnessing his closest friend unapologetically being an utter dick. The sighing may or may not have been accompanied by some discreet yet very enthusiastic cursing of fictitious deities. 

Across the large communal area, Jupiter was on his knees in front of an open cupboard, by all appearances making a complete mess of other people's possessions while seemingly in search of some unidentified object he had previously misplaced. Knowing Jupiter, however, Saturn suspected the mess-making could have just as easily been entirely gratuitous. By Jove, it most likely was! 

Jupiter kept it up for several minutes, during which time the amount of noise coming from the cupboard's general area increased exponentially. Other employees passing by were beginning to linger in bemusement, some even in a badly-veiled state of distress towards the safety of their own belongings. 

Without any warning Jupiter's arm suddenly darted into the air above his head. It gripped a little tin box Saturn knew was filled with loose tea. Pluto's little tin box of loose tea. The little tin box which Pluto habitually found emptied out mere hours after he refilled it. 

Not this again... 

Saturn felt a headache coming on with the force of a geomagnetic solar storm striking an unsuspecting blue planet. 

He'd been holding a report he was meant to correct and resubmit, but that seemed a minute, insignificant detail in Saturn's day compared to the non-literal shitstorm not far off. Jupiter was on his feet and was heading for the kitchen area, no doubt about to make himself some stolen tea. Maybe bark an order or three. Maybe scare the trousers off some unsuspecting intern for no good reason. 

Jupiter was old. That didn't count for much. They were _all_ old. Came with the territory. It meant a lot of things, although it seemed to mostly translate into people walking around with reports in their hands one moment, only to halt in the middle of the hallway the next, frowningly ask themselves what there was to write reports about anyway, then accept a steaming cup of tea from a co-worker, by which point they would have forgotten there was anything odd at all about being an anthropomorphic representation of a celestial body working in an office building writing reports no one would ever read. 

They were all old, but not all of them were _big_ in such a non-traditional sense. 

Saturn was as a tall as Jupiter, maybe a centimetre or two taller, come to think of it. Bigness was something else entirely. Bigness was something Jupiter was more than willing to use for his own ends. 

Besides being gassy (hydrogen had a way of stinking up the office something terrible, and the helium certainly didn't help), Jupiter enjoyed—with an unadulterated glee, one might add—being the office bully. Every single one of his actions involved some form of torture of his co-workers. While Saturn appreciated not being on the receiving end of Jupiter's antics (perks of being the best mate), the incidents were increasing exponentially to the point where he was seriously doubting Jupiter did anything else around the office. Those reports weren't going to write themselves! 

With the aim of the unconcerned and the accuracy of the secretly trying, Saturn threw the uncorrected report onto a nearby counter, watched out of the corner of his eye as it landed perfectly in the middle, then followed Jupiter into the kitchen, entering in time to watch... something very odd happening. 

Granted, that was par for the course around here, but this had some novelty to it. In fact, Jupiter was scooping something into the tin tea box from a small paper bag by his side. Saturn walked further into the room to see that, while there was tea literally _everywhere_ , Jupiter had dumped most of it into the sink. Poor Pluto's tea: another casualty of Jupiter's intra-office "war" on the unsuspecting. 

Either Jupiter had heard Saturn follow him in, or he was particularly observant that morning, but he didn't even flinch when Saturn stopped less than a metre behind him and asked in his most unimpressed voice, "What exactly do you think you're doing?" 

"My good deed for the day," Jupiter replied in his most saccharine tone, without turning around or stopping his scooping. 

Saturn tried a different tactic. 

"You do realise this entire thing, all of it, is supremely weird?" 

"I happen to think eccentricity is a virtue." 

"Yes. In _cats_." 

Jupiter finally turned, although that seemed to be due to his having finished with the tin rather than wanting to face Saturn while they were having a conversation. Wearing a smile that might have passed for innocent if one's eyeballs were missing, he moved to walk out, but Saturn casually blocked his way. 

"No, no, _no_ you don't. This has go to stop." He went for the tin, but Jupiter held it out of reach, though it took only a little scuffling to wrench it out of his hand. "What did you put in this?" Saturn asked while gesticulating with the closed tin. 

Jupiter grinned the grin of the truly pleased with themselves. "Now that would be _telling_ ," he admonished in what he probably thought was a cheeky manner. No one had yet informed him he didn't have it in him to _do_ cheeky, and Saturn wasn't going to be the bearer of bad news. 

"Yes, it would," Saturn conceded, drawing on previously-untapped reserves of calm. "That's exactly what it would be, as I've just asked you. To. Tell. Me." 

He opened the tin, but the lid was hardly off before he took a great big sneeze that would have caused him to drop it and make a right mess, had he not instinctively snapped the lid closed to hold the little tin box tighter. 

When his eyes stopped watering he said, "Again— _what did you put in this?_ " 

Jupiter didn't seem as cheery anymore. "Stinging nettles, if you must know." 

Saturn stared blankly. 

"Still, _technically_ , tea," he added by way of a patently poor explanation. 

"And you achieved this by dumping Pluto's own tea into the sink." It wasn't a question. 

"Just a bit of fun, is all," Jupiter serenely explained. 

"Fun for you, I'm sure." Saturn determinedly went to the bin and upended the contents of the tin box. It formed a cloud of dry nettle particles above the bin until they settled. Then he gingerly placed the tin on the side of the sink before turning around to notice Jupiter examining his nails. 

As far as nonchalant gestures went, it was sorely lacking. 

"The office is so ghastly boring that anything will do, I'm sure," Jupiter muttered. 

"I'm _so_ sorry," Saturn sneered. "Were you waiting for someone to stab you in the face with a rusty pair of scissors?" He smiled encouragingly. "All you had to do was say. I'd be more than willing to oblige," he finished pleasantly. 

"Now don't you start—" 

"Start? _Start?_ You're the one who's always starting! Honestly, the lot of them are going to take up a collection and put a hit out on you any day now, I swear." 

"You know, your use of hyperbole is genuinely—" 

" _Argh!_ " 

And with that, Saturn stomped out. Before Jupiter could start on a very intense bout of frowning (his usual recourse when anyone abandoned him mid-row), Saturn came back, stompier than ever. 

"And another thing: You have _got_ to stop stealing Pluto's tea—" 

"Appropriating," Jupiter corrected. 

"—each morning and telling him he's not a real planet." 

"He's not," Jupiter snapped. 

"That's not the point!" Saturn shrieked, ending on a sound reminiscent of whales mating in the wild. 

Just then a frazzled-looking Pluto hurried into the kitchen. He stopped short the instant he saw who was there. Clearly he had very little self-preservation instincts left, or he had developed a death wish. 

"Um, I was looking for, er— I mean, I swear I left my, um—" 

"Get out!" both Jupiter and Saturn bellowed. 

Pluto's eyes grew to the size of dinner plates and something like a whimper erupted from the back of his throat. 

" _Well?!_ " Saturn barked, turning towards Pluto. 

The art of backing out of a room was truly lost on some. Pluto stumbled backwards over empty air, tried to turn only to bump into the door frame, and finally managed to disappear from sight, though not from earshot. Saturn once again faced Jupiter simply to avoid second-hand embarrassment. 

Ignoring their interruption, Jupiter crossed his arms and said, as if their conversation was progressing naturally, "Then what _is_ the point?" 

Saturn sighed. When he spoke again, he grasped at every ounce of patience he could find within himself. Pluto's disruption had eased some of the tension. 

"The _point_ is that you're behaving like a bag of dicks, and the only one who can still stand to be around you seems to be, well... me," he finished softly. 

Looking like he had just tasted something incomprehensibly disgusting, Jupiter chewed on the inside of his cheek, frowning in the general direction of Saturn, who looked back forlornly. For the next ten minutes they stood facing each other in silence, although Saturn had the distinct feeling that, once the silence was ultimately broken, the next words out of Jupiter's mouth were not going to lead to a happy truce, by any means. 

He was right. 

Jupiter looked like he had come to some kind of mental resolve, and he didn't seem particularly cheerful about it. 

"You know, it's because of my family that we are where we are," he started, apropos of nothing. "Ganymede, Europa, all of them. If it weren't for us—if it weren't for _me_ —those loony advocates of the geocentric position would be everywhere, sprouting utter bilge and claiming the Earth was the centre of the Universe. Is that what you want?" 

"Of course not. How can you say that?" Saturn asked, genuinely hurt at the mere proposition. 

"I say it because sometimes I swear I can't tell whether you're with me or against me. No, let me finish," he said when Saturn tried to interrupt to defend himself. "You're supposed to be my best friend. _My_ best friend. In case you've forgotten. And I know—I _know_ —I'm a pain in the arse to work with, and I steal Pluto's Darjeeling regardless of however many times that little fool changes its hiding spot. Ganymede seems to be the only one who visits me willingly. Io hasn't spoken to me in years—although that's a far sight better than the rest of them calling me up only when they need something from me. But you should be my friend regardless of what anyone else thinks about me." 

"That's always it with you: for or against, no middle ground." 

Jupiter looked away. "It makes things clearer." 

"Really? Because I think it only serves to confuse matters more." 

Just then Venus walked in without looking up, seemingly engrossed in the report they were holding. They distractedly noticed the kitchen was occupied and took a quick turn right back out. In the ensuing uncomfortable silence, Saturn decided to follow. 

He bypassed his desk and headed for the discreet door behind a truly immense potted plant. The stairs behind it led to the exit to the roof half a floor above them. Breaking for lunch wouldn't happen for another couple of hours and the new smoking room on the top floor meant he wouldn't be bothered for the rest of the morning. 

Saturn sat on the ground and leaned against the wall of a concrete utility shed, legs stretched out in front of him. After a bit Jupiter joined him, holding two cups of tea, handing one over and assuming the same position against the wall of the shed. 

"I happen to like shades of grey," Saturn eventually said. He hadn't even tasted the tea yet, but the warmth of the cup and the steam wafting towards him were comforting in and of themselves. 

They must have sat without talking for quite some time, only intermittently sipping tea, because the door opened behind them to a pair of rowdy interns carrying their own lunch in neat sealed containers. The interns took one look at them—Jupiter more than Saturn—and blanched before quickly backing out. Saturn could hear faint noises as if they were stumbling down the stairs in their haste to get away. Jupiter took that as some sort of cue to drink his own tea to the dregs, stand up and leave by the same door. 

By the time Saturn decided to actually drink his tea, it had bypassed lukewarm and gone straight to stone-cold. It wasn't much different than how Saturn felt. 

*

This, dear reader, would be an opportune moment for out heroes to reconcile in a morally-crucial scene worthy of frilly-shirted playwrights. 

Ha! You silly little twit! Whoever said anything about there being any so-called "heroes" in this little yarn? 

(That's not a rhetorical question. Seriously, go reread the beginning if you feel cheated in some way. Feel free to lodge a complaint if your feelings are particularly hurt. Or you could use your time more wisely and take it upon yourself to re-evaluate your ingrained notions of the narrative structure as popularised in Western canon. I, for one, will endeavour to appreciate the relevance of that at a later point, over a pot of tea perhaps.) 

*

The next day Saturn walked into the office to the sight of a shell-shocked Pluto walking around in a daze. Mostly, it involved him walking into walls. 

Mars was frowning diligently in one corner of the office, coffee cup halfway to her mouth. Next to her, Venus was ignoring everyone even more pointedly than usual in favour of revising their latest report. 

It became apparent that the reason everyone seemed both perplexed and slightly concerned was Jupiter, whom Saturn found in the kitchen, making tea for the entire office, an occurrence which would prompt anyone to question the very fabric of the universe, their own sanity, or Jupiter's general health. 

For one ludicrous moment, Saturn wondered whether Jupiter was deathly ill and making amends in view of stopping that pesky business of being alive. Then he remembered they could not, technically, die, and, anyway, Jupiter would hardly find that reason enough to begin a trend of gratuitous niceness. 

"What exactly do you think you're doing?" Saturn said, by way of greeting. 

Jupiter picked up an obscenely large mug of tea and blew over it. 

"You're getting repetitive in your old age," he commented. He grinned widely. "I admire your tenacity." 

"I admire your shit-eating grin," Saturn retorted. "Now tell me what's going on." 

"New tack, old boy," he said. 

Saturn decided playing along would probably be both quicker and less detrimental to his overall health. 

"How so?" 

"Kill them with kindness." Then he sipped his tea.


End file.
